


World Without Pity

by TammyRenH



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Bottom Sam Winchester, Canon Divergence, Hallucination Lucifer (Supernatural) | Hallucifer, Hand Jobs, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Protective Dean Winchester, Top Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 03:32:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17675657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TammyRenH/pseuds/TammyRenH
Summary: Canon divergence beginning with the start of  "Born Again Identity".  As a result of the car hitting him Sam has a broken arm, and instead of finding Cas, Dean breaks Sam out of the hospital. Dean takes Sam to a remote cabin (where there is only one bed cause - well - just cause) and where Sam deals with a lack of sleep, intense pain from his broken arm, and his visions of Lucifer. By accident, Sam discovers that Dean's touch causes Lucifer to vanish, albeit temporarily. However, constant touching causes other issues to develop between the brothers, and their relationship takes a turn neither may be prepared for.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for sammybigbang. I want to thank my talented artist gotaprettymouth formerly be_my_precious for her stunning art and my beta tsalmavet who made this story like a thousand times better than it was. All remaining mistakes are my own. And sorry Sam for being so rough on you in this fic, but it's only because I love you so much!
> 
> Link to art. https://gotaprettymouth.livejournal.com/863116.html

_Tell me in a world without pity_

_Do you think what I’m askin’s too much_

_I just want something to hold on to_

_And a little of that Human Touch_

_Just a little of that Human Touch_

**Human Touch** by Bruce Springsteen

Chapter 1

“Quit being Dalai-friggin-Yoda about this. Get pissed!”  Dean stood there, all sharp concern and oozing worry and Sam just felt – tired.  Exhausted and drained and just – done.

“I’m too tired.”   Beside him Lucifer made false tuts of sympathy and Sam instinctively turned toward him before closing his eyes and turning away. 

“Fine.”  Dean stepped closer to the bed, eying Sam’s arm, broken bone taped together and held barely in place by a sling.  Even through the dull stupor the sleeping pills had enveloped him in, and even though his body had mostly shut down, Sam could still feel the pain radiating from his arm.

Turns out running straight into the path of a moving car hadn’t been his best idea ever.

Dean reached down and patted Sam’s knee.  “It’s okay, Sam, if you can’t fight, I’ll do the fighting for you.”  And then he turned around and left the room.

“I don’t know, Sam.  If that’s the way big brother fights, I think you are in real trouble,” Lucifer taunted him. He began sending an endless stream of paper airplanes into the air.  “Can’t blame him for running, though. Nothing much left in you worth fighting for, is there, Sam-you-am?”

Sam said nothing; he kept his eyes closed and felt the large paper airplanes covering his body. Death by paper airplane, maybe he’d even make the Guinness World Record for that…

The food on his dinner plate had congealed long before the door to his hospital room opened again. He was expecting an orderly.  What he got was Dean, dressed in scrubs, pushing a wheelchair.

Sam sat up in bed, flinching when the movement sparked pain in his arm. 

“Okay, not gonna lie,” Dean said, making sure the hallway was empty and shutting the door.  “This is going to suck.”

“Dean, I know you’re trying to help, but there’s no point.” Dean approached the bed with the wheelchair.  Sam winced as the wheelchair hit the bed, jostling it and in turn Sam’s arm.  “Fuck!”

“Sorry, sorry,” Dean mumbled as he moved the wheelchair back from the bed a smidge.  “Okay, I know you aren’t sitting there waiting for me to pick up your big ass, so skootch on over and get settled so we can get this show on the road.”

“Dean, you aren’t listening to me.” Beside him Lucifer was singing a rousing round of “When the Saints Come Marching In,” loud and off-key and right in Sam’s ear, making it very hard to focus on what was going on in front of him, which Sam guessed was the point.  “Nothing is going to change if you get me out of here.  I can’t shake Lucifer, I can’t sleep, and without sleep I will –“

“We’ll deal with that later.  Right now, I am getting you out of this place. We already know that Leviathans love to hang out in hospitals.”  Dean injected the familiar _I’m the big brother so you have to listen_ tone into his voice.  “Now get in the wheelchair, Sam.”

If Sam was going to die, he guessed it would be better to die with Dean by his side than alone in this sterile hospital room.  Besides, arguing with Dean when Dean’s mind was set was a waste of time and energy, and Sam had precious little of either.  Sighing as Lucifer sang the same verse for the eighth time in a row, Sam scooted until he was on the edge of the bed.

They had given him pain pills, even a shot of morphine, but still any movement sent waves of sharp pain through his arm, jarring his whole body.  Sam gritted his teeth, but he knew that tears had filled his eyes.  Dean was watching Sam, concern practically dripping off him, as Sam lowered himself into the wheelchair as gently as he could.  Dean held it steady as Sam pushed through the pain and got settled.

“Okay, I know this bites.  But we’ll be out of here in just –“ Dean was unlocking the wheels when an orderly pushing a gurney entered the room.  For a moment the two men just stared at each other.

It was the orderly who spoke first.  “I’m here to take the patient for electric shock therapy,” the orderly said, taking a few hesitant steps toward the two men.  “The doctor is waiting for him.”

“A lobotomy.”  Lucifer clapped his hands.  “Just what you need Sam, turn that brain of yours right into mush. It’s gonna leak right out of your ears.”

At the same time Dean was speaking.  “Well first he has an appointment in X-ray.  So, after he’s done with that, I’ll take him to – to wherever it is he’s getting his brain French-fried.  The X-ray guy is bitching about wanting to go home, so I’ve got to get him down there.  You can take your gurney and go.”

The man stared and then he smiled.  His eyes flashed black. “Fuck,” Sam breathed. His language skills were seriously disintegrating, along with the rest of him.

“I don’t think so, Dean Winchester,” the demon said, shutting the door and making a show of cracking his fingers. “Two Winchesters at once—I’ll be a fucking legend.”

Dean pushed the wheelchair aside, jostling Sam—and as Sam suffered through the fresh wave of white-hot pain, Dean placed himself between Sam and the demon.

“Oh, gunfight at OK Corral,” Lucifer exclaimed, gun in his hand pointed at Dean.  Not real, thought Sam.  Not real.  The gun went off and Sam bit his lip until there was blood in an effort not to yell out, not to distract Dean. “A fight to the death, but which one is going to bite it?  My bet is on big bro, what do you think, Sam?”

Sam thought that they were screwed.  Dean’s back was one tense line, the only sign he was affected by facing down a demon.  “If you think you can take me,” Dean was saying, angling himself so that Sam was no longer in the line of fire, “Come and get me, you cowardly piece of – “

The demon lunged.  Demons could move things with a flick of their hand, could kill from afar, but without fail when provoked they turned into mindless attack dogs – all bulk strength, no finesse.  Dean easily dodged the demon before thrusting Ruby’s knife into the man’s back.  Snarling, the demon turned around and lunged for Dean again, knocking both of them to the floor in the process, and wrapped his hands around Dean’s neck—but he was already beginning to spark.  Dean reached behind the demon, pulling the knife out of the demon’s back and plunging it into its throat.  The demon sparked out.

“Place is chock-full of them, you know,” Lucifer said, looking down at the demon as Dean struggled to his feet.  “Big bro won’t be able to kill all of them with his handy dandy little knife.”

For a figment of Sam’s broken mind, Lucifer had a point.

“This place is probably crawling with demons,” Sam said.  “Just leave me here. There’s no way you can get us both out.”

“I’m just going to pretend that you didn’t just underestimate the hell out of me.”  Dean wiped the blade off and stuck Ruby’s knife back in his jacket.  “The latest junk heap posing as a car is waiting for us behind the service door entrance.  Any demon gets in the way, I’ll just run over the motherfucker.  Now hold on, cause this is going to be one hell of a ride.”

The next few minutes went by in a flurry of pain. Sam saw blurry things in the corner of his vision as Dean practically ran down the hallway, into the elevator, and down to the ground level, Lucifer keeping up a running commentary about how it was all a trap, how they were running right into a horde of demons, about how Sam was going to have to watch Dean die.  There was pain and more pain as the wheelchair hit the side of the service door and Sam’s arm was jostled. 

Sam could barely make out several loiterers hanging around the side door before Dean was shouting at him to get into the car.  Sam just managed to get out of the wheelchair and into the passenger seat before Dean had the car barreling down the parking lot.   Dean drove right through the demons, who had realized too late that they had been watching the wrong door.

Dean gave a whoop of victory as they sped down the road.  Lucifer, who was sitting in the back seat, drawled, “Not that it matters—you are going to die anyway.”

Sam ignored him, putting all his effort into not crying out as each bump and jolt of the car sent fresh shards of pain through the broken bone in his arm, but deep inside he figured Lucifer was probably right.

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Apparently it’s been in Garth’s family for generations,” Dean explained as he fussed around, making sure Sam’s arm was propped up and stable.  “Ain’t no cell service out here, but that’s okay, nobody we need to talk to anyway.”

The last several hours had been literal hell.  Dean, after realizing how much pain Sam had been in, had tried his best to drive more carefully, but every time the car stopped or turned a corner or the road was rough (like the gravel one that the cabin was located on), Sam had been in agony.  Lucifer reveled in his pain, Dean guilted over it, and Sam was just exhausted from trying to pretend it wasn’t as bad as it was. Getting into the cabin, which was a really fancy name for one big room and a bathroom—but thank god it had running water—was another level of torture.  Especially since his arm was apparently very unhappy with being jostled so much, and very eager to let Sam know how unhappy it was.  He was so exhausted, so tired of being in so much pain, that all he wanted to do was close his eyes and let the world just melt away.  But Lucifer, of course, was ensuring that didn’t happen.

“Comfy, Sammy?” Lucifer asked, all faux concern. “Isn’t big brother taking such good care of you? Getting you pillows, making sure you have enough blankets, any moment now he’s going to sing you a little lullaby.  Rock-a-bye Sammy – “

Sam ignored the god-awful singing as Dean finally sat down in the only other furniture in the room besides the bed – a faded blue easy chair, stuffing seeping out of the arms. Sam could hear the springs whine as Dean sat down; the chair couldn’t be comfortable.  Dean pushed it closer to the bed, so that if he reached out, he could have touched Sam. 

The cabin was barely functional.  There was a wood stove, obviously used for both heat and for cooking, but no signs of a refrigerator or any way to store perishables.  There were cans stacked against one wall, and one of those cast iron pans by the stove. Paint was peeling off the walls, and plastic covered the windows where the glass had been broken. Rustic didn’t even begin to describe it.

“I think it’s been a while since Garth’s family stayed here,” Dean admitted, watching as Sam eyed the place.  “I know it ain’t much, but we won’t be here long anyway.  We’ll get your back on your feet in no time.”

“It’s not my feet that’s the problem,” Sam sighed as he turned back toward Dean. “What are you going to do for food?”

“This ain’t my first rodeo, Sammy.  I stopped by the store on my way to pick you up, grabbed some food, it’s all still in the car.  And we’re going to eat what’s here,” Dean said, using one hand to indicate the cans.  “Plus, as you might recall, Bobby taught us how to hunt—well, he taught me. You were too scared of Bambi to learn.”

“Wasn’t scared,” Sam mumbled, but he smiled.

“Anyway, it’s not like we’re moving in, we won’t be here long enough to run out of food.  Before you know it, you’ll be good as new and we’ll be on our way.”

“Dean, the Leviathans are up to something, you can’t just take a vacation.”  Sam blew out a breath and tried reasoning with Dean once more.  “Look, they need you out there.  Me—with my dominant arm out of commission, with Lucifer – I’d just be in the way.  But you – “

“No.  No.”   Dean stood up, fist clenching and unclenching.  “I know you’re tired and hurt but just – stop.  We can beat this, Sam, we _will_ beat this.  And while are for damn sure the best, we aren’t the only hunters out there.  Some of the other hunters can take care of things while we’re gone, figure out how to stop those sons of bitches.  It doesn’t always have to be us and even if they can’t – even if – “  Dean turned around and faced the blank wall in front of them.  “I just lost Cas.  I can’t take another loss right now, Sam, I just can’t.  I am not going to lose you too.”

“But we have to face facts here, Dean,” Sam said softly.  “I – even with all the pills they gave me, he’s still here, all the time.  He’s standing right beside you, repeating every word you say but with great dramatic gestures. Or he’s singing, or throwing things, or popping firecrackers, or taunting me.  I can’t get him out of my head, and I can’t sleep, and I can’t go on this way.  This isn’t a problem either one of us can fix.  If you would just leave, Dean – it won’t be long, and it will be over.”

“I said _no_.”  Dean was almost shouting, teeth grinding together and body taut. He grabbed his rifle and headed out the door.  “You just – you just lie there and think of anything else but that damn hallucination and I’m going to go get dinner.  We will figure this out Sam.  We will.  You just – you just be here when I get back.”

The door slammed, and Sam sighed as he lay back on the bed.  Beside him, Lucifer was laughing hysterically, but Sam was too tired to figure out exactly what had set him off.

Dean came back two agonizingly slow hours later with a freshly skinned rabbit and a much calmer demeanor.  Neither one really talked while Dean cooked the rabbit and heated a can of green beans.

Sam tried to eat some of the food, but it kept moving, the fried rabbit morphed into a live rabbit with a fluffy tail that wiggled, and Sam finally had to give it up.  Dean finished what was on his plate and said nothing about Sam’s barely-touched one.

He put the plates on the floor and wiped his hands on his pants while his eyes skittered over to Sam again.

Showtime, Sam thought…

“So, I’ve been thinking.” Dean began as he approached the bed. 

“First time for everything,” Lucifer chimed in.

Sam said nothing.

Dean continued.  “This not-sleeping thing, it’s because of the hallucinations, right?  So, we just fix it.  You’re the one who always wants to talk things out, so that’s what we are going to do. Something in that freaky mind of yours is causing you to hallucinate, we figure out what it is. We get the hallucinations to stop, you sleep.”

“Golly gee whiz, why didn’t we think of that?”  Lucifer mocked.  “All I have to do is quietly go away and you go beddie-bye.“ Lucifer began tiptoeing around the small room.  “Shh-I’m being quiet.  Do you feel better Sam?  Feel like taking a little nappy-nap?”

Sam sighed and focused again on Dean, who was watching him with an unabashedly worried expression on his face. “Why didn’t we just go to Rufus’ cabin?”

“I’m trying to have a serious conversation, and this is your response?”  Dean asked, clearly exasperated.  “Because this is closer.  Because no hunter other than Garth knows this place exists, and he’s on his way to Kansas for a hunt.  We both know that your – problem—is something medicine can’t fix, and I wanted a place where it was just me and you and no distractions.”

“Leviathans are a pretty big distraction, Dean.”  Sam struggled to sit up, eyes tearing up slightly, against his wishes, as the broken bone in his arm tugged.  “Someone might need us—well, they might need you.”

“Then that’ll have to wait, because this is more important.  Are we finished avoiding the real subject here?”  Dean asked, arms folded against his chest.

He always did know Sam so well.

“I just – I don’t know what good talking about it is.  He’s here constantly, he’s been here since Cas broke my wall.  I – I can’t wish him away, I can’t press on my hand and make him vanish anymore.  He’s still here.  And as long as he’s around, I can’t sleep.  And if I can’t sleep – “

“You live,” Dean replied.  “You might hallucinate, and you might lose brain cells by car load, but you can’t die from not sleeping.  I googled it.”

Sam looked at Dean, a bit bemused.  “When did you find time to google it?  On the drive up here?”  He was proud of himself for biting back the comment that he was shocked Dean even knew what googling was.

“No, idiot.  Before I came to rescue your sorry ass.  So, the sleep will come, we just have to make the hallucination go away. And that is what it is, Sam, it’s a hallucination.  He’s not real.”

“It’s not that I don’t know that, I do.  Yet there he is.”  Sam waved his hands in the direction of Lucifer, who was trying very unsuccessfully to juggle three cans of creamed corn.  The cans made a bit of a squelching sound as they hit the floor.

.  “And while he’s there, I don’t sleep.”

Lucifer had added a can of spinach to the mix, so now there were four cans being carelessly thrown around instead of three.  Lucifer appeared to be very intent on his abysmal juggling, but the gleeful smile he sent Sam’s way before speaking proved he had heard every word the two had said.

“Maybe he has a nice straitjacket for you in the car,”  Lucifer cooed.  “I bet it’s plaid colored.”

“So, pain doesn’t work anymore.  Maybe relaxing will.”  Dean stood up and stretched.  Sam looked at him, a bit dumbfounded. 

“You think I can relax between Lucifer dropping cans of food all over the floor and my arm throbbing like crazy?”

“Hey, tell him to be careful with those, it’s the only food we got.”  Dean said with one of his half-smiles.  “Yeah, relax.  Just let your mind drift.  You used to do that yoga crap, right?  Just Zen it out.”

“I did that ‘yoga crap,’ as you call it, a few times in college, which was almost a decade ago,” Sam corrected.  “Plus, there are no yoga poses that I can do with this arm and my extreme inability to concentrate.” 

Lucifer was levitating in an exaggerated yoga pose. He was nothing if not predictable.

“Okay, yoga is out.  We can’t watch a movie, no TV.  Or internet   Reading probably wouldn’t work, not with Lucifer distracting you.  Okay.”  Dean sat down beside Sam in the bed, Sam watched him wide-eyed.  “Scoot down as much as you can without jostling the arm too much.”

“He’s going to choke you.”  Lucifer levitated almost to the ceiling.  “What fun.”

“You probably don’t know this about me…” said Dean, settling behind Sam in the very small space available to him. His legs were on either side of Sam’s thighs, his body so close Sam could feel Dean’s breath on his neck.  He suddenly felt very distracted, and very uncomfortable.

“Oh, he’s going to tell us a story.  I love stories.”  Lucifer sat on the chair, legs folded beneath him.  “I bet it’s a bedtime story.  I bet it has a prince, a noble one with dark blonde hair and grass-green eyes.  Ask him, Sam, if the pretty maiden is woken with a kiss, what would it take to put one to sleep?”

Sam brushed back his hair from his forehead, and of course he was sweating.  He quickly dropped his hand.  “You look nervous.  Are you nervous, Sam?  Why are you nervous? Is it because big brother is so close?” Lucifer went on, and Sam thought he could let his arm blind him with pain forever, if it would get rid of this parasite, if it would quiet the voice that was rattling him so badly.

“...but I’m very good at this. Your only job is to relax.” Dean continued as if there had been no pause in his sentence, and Sam jumped, jolting that damn arm again.  Dean’s hands were right below his neck. “This would work better if your shirt was off.”

Sam’s mind skittered, trying to land on what ‘this’ could be.  Lucifer had any number of lewd suggestions, which made it very hard to concentrate.  Sam was still wearing the linen top and pants from the hospital; he had been dreading the change of clothes.  Dean was pushing up on the shirt and Sam tried to help him get it off. After a few moments of trying to move his arm, broken bone barely held together in the splint that they had provided him, Dean just cut the shirt off with his pocket knife.  A few painful seconds later, the top lay on the floor in shreds.  Sam was shivering, from the pain or from the lack of sleep or from Dean’s careful hands on him, he couldn’t say.

“Relax,” Dean repeated, and his hands were on Sam’s neck, lightly touching Sam there.  Dean gently pushed Sam’s head down, and he could no longer see Lucifer, which was a bit unnerving as Lucifer was suddenly uncharacteristically quiet. Sam could feel his pulse pick up as Dean started rubbing his upper back, his thumbs pressing in.

Finally, Sam’s tired mind caught up.  It was a massage.

Sam tried to shut down his whirling thoughts while Dean continued to rub Sam’s pressure points.  Sam realized that Dean was singing under his breath and Sam had to strain to hear and understand the words.  “ _We’ll be able to fly_ ….”

“Don’t Fear the Reaper.”  How fucking appropriate, Sam thought, and his eyes closed as Dean’s hands moved lower, to his middle back.  Dean had told the truth: he was very good at this, Sam thought.  His mind began to drift: he and Dean in Baby, this song blaring so loud the noise was shaking the console, Dean laughing as he sing-shouted the lyrics and Sam, so happy to be with his big brother, so bathed in Dean’s warmth that he had thought – this was like flying -

“ _Love of two is one.  Here but now they’re gone_.”

Dean’s hands were rough and steady and so good on his lower back, his voice low and soothing and gruff and perfect and Sam felt his head drooping lower and his mind returned to the memory – he could almost feel the wind in his hair as Baby roared on the open –

And that was Sam’s last thought before he slid into sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Sam woke up to the sound of pouring water.  No, he realized, not just pouring - gushing.

He started up in bed as oceans of water headed toward him, the room was filled with it and the roar was so loud - 

“Shh, it’s okay,” Dean sleepily murmured beside him.  “We’re okay.”

Sam blinked away the hallucination and the room turned back to normal. Lucifer was standing at the foot of the bed, looking at him with a smug expression on his face. 

Sam sighed and lay back down facing Dean, and then shot right back up, which his arm didn’t like one bit judging by the way it sparked fresh shards of pain.  “Dean?”

Dean rubbed his eyes and sat up.  “Only one bed, dude.”  Dean looked at his watch.  “Hey, we got almost four hours, not bad.”

Sam was still recovering from the shock of Dean in his – their? – bed and the fresh surge of pain emanating from his arm.  “We slept – I slept?”

“Four hours,” Dean confirmed.  “Well, three hours and fifty-four minutes, but who’s counting?”  Dean got out of bed while Sam was still struggling to process this information.  Dean was wearing a t-shirt and boxers, and Sam watched as Dean reached down to pick his jeans off the floor. 

Sam couldn’t believe he had actually slept. It had seemed impossible, with the way that Lucifer never let up, but last night – last night Lucifer had gone quiet after Dean had massaged him for a few minutes.  Maybe there was hope for Sam yet.  Maybe – maybe he could get back on his feet, become useful again.  Maybe Dean was right, maybe this was what he needed to heal.

He didn’t feel rested exactly—it would take more than four hours of sleep to accomplish that feat—but he did feel less hazy, and the shimmer of hope those precious hours of sleep gave him was making him almost lightheaded with something suspiciously like relief.  “Wow,” Sam said, pushing up to a sitting position.  “You really do have magic hands.”

Dean gave a startled chuckle and Sam felt a blush begin to form. “I meant – “

“I know what you meant.  Never an unsatisfied customer,” Dean replied with a wink that had Sam’s face, for some unknown reason, flushing even hotter.  For a moment there was an awkward kind of energy between them before Dean cleared his throat. “Well, now that we’re up, we might as well eat.  No bacon and eggs, which sucks, but I did pick you up some of that oatmeal you like, granola bars, whatever I could grab that looked like it was made out of tree bark.”

Dean was out the door before Sam could say anything.  Sam realized his arm was still radiating pain and looked down to check on it.  The splint was still in place and there were no red streaks above it or below the break, but without treatment, it was not going to heal right.  If he had stayed in the hospital and had survived the night (of which he figured the surgeon was doubtful), he was supposed to have had surgery this morning to put pins in his arm.  If Dean was right, and he found a way out of this mess with Lucifer, he still had a really big problem to deal with.  Between demons and Leviathans hanging out in hospitals, it was going to be hell to find a safe place to get his arm operated on.

Lucifer, clearly unhappy about Sam being Lucifer-free for so long, was throwing ping pong balls around the room.  Sam tried to ignore them, but he was still sleepy and hazy and the sound of the ping pong balls hitting the floor and the walls was a tad hypnotic.  Sam found himself focusing on them, mesmerized as the balls bounced, bounced, bounced…

“Hey Sam.” Dean touched his shoulder and Sam was able to refocus away from the ball bouncing so very close to the edge of the bed. “Ready to eat?”

Sam forced a smile and scooted toward the edge of the bed.  “Yeah, sure.”

Ten minutes later he was ready to admit defeat.  The granola bar wiggled in his hands as Lucifer snorted laughter from the other side of the room, and he was pretty sure the white things moving around in the oatmeal were maggots, so –

“You have got to eat, Sam,” Dean said to him as he sat down in the chair and scooted it closer to the bed.  Sam was sitting on the edge of the bed, feet planted on the floor, eyes anywhere but on his wiggly food.  “You have to keep up your strength.”

“I’m trying.”  Sam insisted.  He attempted another bite of the oatmeal, this time with his eyes closed but when the oatmeal began moving around in his mouth, he spit it out instinctively.  Sadly for Dean, he was right in the line of the fire.  “God, sorry.  Sorry.”  Sam put down the food.  “I’ll try again later, I’m not that hungry anyway.”

“That might sound more convincing if your stomach wasn’t growling loud enough to drown out the sound of a departing jet, ”Dean replied, using his shirt to wipe away the oatmeal and taking the bowl and spoon from Sam.    
“Which gives me an idea, maybe it’s time for Mr. Airplane to make an appearance.”

“Yes, that would work if I was two, or _really_ insane instead of just _mostly_.”  Lucifer, predictably, began zooming around the room, creating dust clouds from thin air as he buzzed around the bed. 

Dean scooted closer, until his knee touched Sam’s.  “We just have to find a way to – “

Sam pushed his knee against Dean’s in an attempt to get him to scoot back, but Dean was unmovable.  Sam was distracted from his silent battle with Dean’s legs by a wave of hunger and realized the oatmeal didn’t look like it was wiggling anymore.  “I could try again.  I’ll just keep my eyes closed and if you – “

“Feed you like you were two?”  Dean smirked. “Okay, Sammy, open wide, cause Mr. Airplane is coming in for a landing.”

Sam managed most of the oatmeal in the bowl before deciding that was good enough for now.  Dean went to take the bowl over to the bathroom, as that was where the cabin’s one and only sink was located.  Lucifer, who had been eerily silent as Sam ate, had apparently tired of miming an airplane and was now drawing lewd pictures on the wall with colored chalk that had appeared from nowhere.  Sam felt a blush rising as he realized the pictures were of him and Dean.

“Sam, something wrong?”  Dean asked, as he reentered the room and began gathering his own bowl and dirty spoon and taking them into the bathroom to wash.  When Sam shook his head in response, Dean raised an eyebrow in skepticism but said nothing.  Dean returned to the bathroom and closed the door behind him this time.

The door had barely closed before Sam realized that he really needed to pee.  The cabin being so small, he could hear Dean peeing and it had triggered a Pavlovian response in him.  He stood up and awkwardly shifted from one foot to the other while waiting for the bathroom door to reopen.

“Going somewhere?”  Dean asked, after water ran for what seemed like an hour and Dean left the bathroom. Sam practically ran into the bathroom before realizing he couldn’t untie the knot in the drawstring on his hospital pants with just his one good hand. Damn.

He turned around and was only a little surprised to see Dean looking at him sheepishly through the open doorway.  Without saying anything, Dean untied Sam’s pants. Dean began to shove them down as well, but that was one step way too far and Sam pushed his hand away.  As silently as he had come, Dean left the room.

The bathroom consisted of a toilet, a shower, and a sink.  A sink that only poured cold water, Sam realized by the time he was washing his hands.  Sam made his way to the door, not at all surprised to see Dean waiting for him there.  “I think the hot water’s broken,” Sam said, as a way of distracting himself from the sight of Dean re-tying his pants for him.   Sam thought about putting on jeans instead, but the idea of trying to shimmy into them and zip them up with his one good hand was too daunting.  Maybe after more sleep.

“Yeah, no hot water heater,” Dean said as he finished with the string.  Sam was conscious he still didn’t have a shirt on, but there was no way to push one over his head, or even pull his broken arm though the sleeve of one of his button ups.  He barely resisted the urge to cross his good arm over his bare chest and instead concentrated on what Dean was telling him as Lucifer practiced standing on his head.   “Plumbing system was apparently pieced together by someone who knew nothing about plumbing.  I think the water comes from that well out there, but who knows.”

“So, showers?”  Sam asked, as he sat back down on the edge of the bed.

“Cold enough to freeze your balls off,” Dean confirmed.  “Look, if you’re going to be okay for a bit, I’m going to see if I can find something better for your arm—that sling clearly isn’t cutting it.   You need something that is going to stabilize it. Also, I want to check out the nearest neighbors, make sure they aren’t friends of Dick.  Maybe put up some wards around the perimeter of the cabin.  I shouldn’t be too long.  I figure some of those books in your backpack are thick enough to keep you occupied for an hour or two.”

Sam really, really didn’t want to be alone with Lucifer, but he also really didn’t want Dean thinking he had to babysit him.  When the fuck did he get to be so needy?  He’d been dealing with Lucifer on his own for weeks now. A few hours weren’t going to kill him.  Probably.  He scooted up in the bed, managing to hide his wince of pain this time, and reached in the backpack Dean opened for him.  “I’ll be fine, go do what you need to do.”

Dean fussed a bit, checked the salt lines, made sure Sam had everything he needed and just when Sam was about to ask if he really intended to leave, Dean headed out the door.

“I thought he’d never go away,” Lucifer said as he bounced up and down on his toes.  “Wanna play Twister?”

Three hours later, when Dean came back with a splint made of two pieces of wood and some rope, Sam had not been able to read one word of his book.  Lucifer, however, was having a grand time. He sang.  He danced.  He aimed arrows at Sam’s head.  He gave a running commentary about Dean being eaten by bears, attacked by Leviathans, falling into the well.   All the while, Sam’s arm throbbed and ached, and Sam felt increasingly tired and overwhelmed.

He had tried closing his eyes, escaping into sleep, but Lucifer never stopped for a moment. He tried eating, but creepy crawly things were oozing out of the granola bar that Dean had left on the bed for him.  All the hope he had felt earlier had fled with the reality that the little sleep and the few bites of food he had managed were probably a fluke.  He was never going to be able to function properly, he was just going to be a burden to Dean until he slipped away.

“You don’t look so good,” Dean observed as he unceremoniously dumped all the items he had brought with him onto the floor. 

“I don’t feel so good either,” Sam admitted, and then felt shame for that moment of weakness. So his arm hurt, and Lucifer was being – well – Lucifer.  He should never had said that. Now Dean would feel guilty and act more mother-hen-fussy and Sam would feel more guilty about pushing Dean’s always red-hot guilt buttons.  It was a vicious circle and he was the one who had started it spinning.

He rubbed his good hand over his face.  “In fact, I am feeling pretty rough,” he added, wincing at how lame the joke was.  Dean looked unimpressed too as he began assembling the splint.

“It’s okay,” Dean said and the words echoed in Sam’s mind, flashbacks of Dean constantly murmuring those words to him when they were both so much younger, after nightmares, and after having to pack everything up to move yet again, and after John yelling at him because he wasn’t training hard enough, and even later on, after Jess and after everything that had happened since.  “It’s okay,” Dean repeated with a soft smile as he looked Sam in the eye. “I’m going to fix you right up.”


	4. Chapter 4

First, Dean insisted on Sam taking pain pills.  Sam didn’t really want to, because the last time he tried to medicate Lucifer away, he had landed in the hospital.  Plus, his arm was clearly going to be painful for a long time, so he was going to have to find a way to deal with it that didn’t involve pain medicine or getting high.

But Dean had stubbornness down to an art form, especially where Sam’s well-being was concerned, and he wasn’t about to touch Sam’s arm until Sam was properly dosed. So after some mainly-token grousing, Sam took the pain pills and they waited for them to kick in.

After a while, Sam realized he was floaty.  Floaty was good, he liked being floaty, he wasn’t sure why he had resisted it. In this state, Lucifer was fuzzy and small and who cared about a Lucifer when you had a Dean? Dean standing over him, with his long lashes and his beautiful eyes and those full, pouty -  

Sam’s thoughts jolted away from that alarming path.  Where the hell did that come from?  

Sam could hear Lucifer cackling on the other side of the room, making kissing noises between howls of laughter, but it didn’t matter.  Dean was looking down at him with all that concern and fondness and his hand was stroking Sam’s other arm with that worried look and Lucifer was fading into the nothing that he was.

Sam realized he was humming.  Sam never hummed. Dean was the one who hummed.  But here he was, looking up at Dean and humming.

Bruce Springsteen, huh, that was new.

“Earth to Sammy,” Dean said, pushing the chair close to Sam again, and Sam pressed his leg against Dean’s, and Dean’s touch felt good and Dean was really good at touching and his hand felt good on Sam’s arm.  Sam watched as Dean tentatively reached for Sam’s sling.

“I’m sorry, kiddo, but this is going to hurt like hell.”

Dean slipped the sling off Sam’s arm and Sam could hear moaning and it was probably him because Lucifer wasn’t saying anything, but everything seemed far away and it was much too hard to focus.  And Dean was murmuring words, low and comforting and Sam couldn’t make them out, but then the floaty feeling was replaced by red-hot-sharp-pain as Dean straightened his arm out and the world came crashing back.

Sam didn’t know if he passed out, or if time just skipped, but once the pain receded from kill-me-now to hello-my-old-friend levels, Dean was tying the two pieces of wood together, stabilizing Sam’s arm.

Sam looked at it.  “Huh.”

“Something wrong, Sam?”  Dean asked, as he finished with the splint.

“I can’t bend my arm,” Sam explained.  “I won’t be able to brush my teeth.”

Dean chortled. ”If only that was our biggest worry.”  Dean patted the pillow behind Sam.  “Lie down, Sam, maybe you can get some more sleep.”

“Stupid Lucifer is singing again.”  With Dean moving away, picking up the rest of the stuff on the floor, Sam realized it was true.  Lucifer was sitting on the stove, singing “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” which it wasn’t, because it wasn’t even winter yet.  Stupid Lucifer.

“Just ignore him,” Dean advised, going back to the bed and gently pushing Sam down.  “Try to sleep but be careful of that arm.”

“I can’t sleep if you aren’t right here,” Sam said, suddenly very sure of this fact as his good arm patted the space behind him.  “You’re supposed to be right, right here.”

“Sam, I need to – “

Sam looked up at him and realized he was pouting, which was silly, but he pouted anyway because he wanted to sleep, and Dean wasn’t doing what he was supposed to do.

Dean sighed.  “Okay, I haven’t gotten much sleep lately either.  We’ll both lie down for a while, okay?  A little nap before supper.”

“Okay,” Sam agreed, and wiggled closer to the front of the bed so that Dean had room to climb over, getting behind Sam.

“We used to do this when we were little,” Sam said, feeling the bed shift as Dean tried to find a way to lie down comfortably.  “You were the big spoon and I was little back then.”

“I remember.   That was before you grew like ten feet,” Dean murmured from behind him.  “Try to close your eyes now, Sam.”

Sam was lying on his side and Dean was too, but too far away for Sam’s liking. “I can’t.  It’s all still wrong.  Lucy’s noisy and you are too far away.”  Sam scooted back the inch or two that it took for him to touch the back of his shoulder with the front of Dean’s. “That’s better.”

“Okay,” Dean said, flipping over so he was on his stomach, but then his shoulder was touching Sam’s again and it was all right again.  “Be careful of that arm, Sam.”

Sam was about to insist that he was careful, that it was just lying there all straight and awkward in front of him, but his eyes were all droopy and Lucifer was quiet, and Dean’s shoulder felt good against his and…

He woke up the smell of fish frying and Lucifer reading aloud about amputation from a medical journal.

“Feel better?”  Dean asked.  “I put some more pain pills on the chair for you. The ones you took earlier should be wearing off right about now.”

Sam ignored the pills and sat up, wincing at the fresh wave of pain.  His arm, straight and useless, settled by his side.  “How long was I out?” he asked.  His mouth felt dry and chalky and the floaty feeling had been replaced by a feeling of heaviness.

“About two hours, give or take.  I just got back from the lake. I’ll take you there tomorrow.  You’ll like it, it’s peaceful down there, and even one-handed you should be able to handle a fishing pole.”

“Glad to know I’m not totally useless.”  Sam felt his neck pop as he rounded his shoulders.  “I figured we’d head back to civilization tomorrow, check on the situation with the Leviathans.”

“Maybe in a few days, if you keep improving,” Dean replied, but his tone was careful, the way it was when he was trying to pacify Sam and hide his real feelings.  “This will be ready in a bit, why don’t you wash up?”

Sam used the bathroom and washed his face using the washcloth by the sink and his one good hand.  The cracked mirror over the sink showed a gaunt man with sunken eyes and dirty, stringy hair.  No wonder Dean didn’t trust him in the real world—he looked like a starved, half-dead refugee from an apocalypse.  Which wasn’t that far from the truth. 

Lucifer was making gagging noises as Sam turned away from the mirror.

Dinner was a repeat of their previous meal.  Sam tried to eat the fish but every time he tried cutting a piece off with his fork it kept moving, to Lucifer’s never-ending glee.

And the flies that swarmed it were –

Dean sighed, moved his chair closer to Sam and nudged Sam’s leg out of the way and Sam closed his eyes and Lucifer faded a bit as Dean silently fed him a few forkfuls, and everything was kind of okay until Dean got up to get a glass of water and then there was a buzzing sound and his mouth started to twitch and then flies flew right out of Sam’s mouth –

Sam barely made it to the toilet before throwing up the few bites he had eaten.

Dean was there, pushing his hair out of the way, handing him water to wash his mouth out when it was over, guiding him back to bed.

Dean disposed of dinner as Sam got settled again.  He knew he shouldn’t be spending so much time lying around, but he felt too drained to do anything else.

He picked up the book again, Stephen King. It was a good one, but the words swam, and Sam couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was reading.

“Not into the book?”  Dean asked.  He had his gun out, getting ready to clean it.  Sam figured he would clean all the weapons that they had in their possession while they were here.  Dean never was one for sitting still.

“It’s good.  It’s just – “ Sam looked over to the foot of the bed where Lucifer was shredding the medical book, page by loud ripping page.  “I can’t concentrate.”

“You could try reading aloud,” Dean suggested.  “Might help you focus.”

“I guess.”  Sam tried, but he couldn’t talk over Lucifer who was singing “Henry the Eighth I Am” at a mind-numbing volume.  Sam gave up, putting the book down.

Dean had finished with the gun by this point. 

“Nope, I asked you to read to me and you are going to read to me. I’m bored and it’s your job to entertain me.”  Dean crawled up the foot of the bed until he was sitting next to Sam.  “Now start reading.”

Sam rolled his eyes but couldn’t hide his fond smile.  He picked up the book again and tried to read, but the words continued to squiggle.

Dean laid his head on Sam’s good shoulder.  “Sammmmmmy, read me a story.”  He faked a whine.  “Pleeeeaseee.”

Sam playfully tried to push Dean off, but he remained in place, batting his eyes as he looked up at Sam.  Sam looked at the book again and was surprised to see that the words had stopped moving.  Cautiously he started to read, and Lucifer was shockingly quiet.  After finishing the chapter he was on, Sam looked up, and Lucifer wasn’t sitting on the stove, or hovering over the foot of the bed.  In fact, he wasn’t anywhere in the room.

Dean poked at his chest.  “Don’t stop now, it was just getting good.”                                  

Sam began to read again, and he was almost to the end of the next chapter when Dean shifted away, lying down on his side, his eyes still focused on Sam.

The words began to move around again, and Lucifer started singing right where he left off.

Irritated, Sam shifted on the bed and his leg ended up half covering Dean’s and Lucifer stopped mid-verse and disappeared again.

“Hey,” Dean said, shoving Sam’s leg away.  “Personal space, dude.”

And Lucifer was back, just as if he had never left—and Sam looked over at Dean, wide-eyed and shook to his core.

“What?”  Dean asked, and he sat up in bed, on full alert. “Sam, what is it?”

It was Dean’s touch.  It was why he could eat when Dean was touching him, it was why he could sleep when Dean’s hands were massaging him, or when their shoulders were touching.  It was Dean’s touch that drove Lucifer away.

It was Dean.


	5. Chapter 5

“I don’t understand,” Dean said for the fifth time.

“It’s _you_ – well I don’t know if it’s you or not, maybe it’s everyone.  Maybe it’s just touch.”  Sam sat up straighter in the bed.  “But when you touch me, he goes away.”

“So if I—“ Dean reached over and poked Sam on his non-injured arm.  “--do this, he goes away?”

“No, poking me just makes me crabby, it doesn’t make Lucifer go away.”  Lucifer was dancing a jig, wearing a big green hat.  He looked ridiculous.  And as real as he always looked to Sam.

“Okay, so if I do this.”  Dean put his hand on Sam’s arm for maybe five seconds.  Lucifer faded a bit and he wasn’t as loud, but he was still there, now singing how he was getting jiggy with it while dancing the jig. 

“No, for him to go away and stay away it has to be longer contact.  Like our shoulders touching when we were sleeping, or the way your legs were pressed against mine when you were feeding me.”

“My legs weren’t pressed against nothing. If anything, it was your gigantor legs that were plastered all over me.”  Dean grumbled.  Dean inched over and pressed his shoulder against Sam’s arm.  “Now?”

“Just keep it there.”  Sam requested.  He watched Lucifer, who after about ten seconds began to falter.  Half a minute into the contact, he began to fade.  A little over two minutes in he was gone, and Sam’s world was blissfully free of jigging.  “That worked.”

Dean immediately broke the contact.  Lucifer came back and continued his jig as if he had never left.  “And he’s back.”  Sam announced.

“Okay, this is weird.  Even for us, weird.”  Dean commented.  “I mean Lucifer’s a figment of your over-abused nerd-brain.  Why on earth would my touch, anyone’s touch, make him vanish?”

“I don’t know, Dean.  I’m just telling you how it is, I can’t explain the why.” Sam rubbed his hand across his face.  Lucifer was creating tiny creatures now, leprechauns Sam supposed, who were all dancing a jig with him.  It wasn’t even March.  “Can you please just touch me again?”

Dean sighed and pushed against Sam.  “This constant touching thing is going to be a pain in the ass.”  Dean observed.  “Plus, now I have to pee.”

“Go pee then.”  Sam scooted over as far as he could, breaking the contact.  Lucifer hadn’t even had time to disappear.  “Plus, you don’t have to touch me if you don’t want to.  It’s not like I can’t deal with Lucifer. I’ve been dealing.”

“And doing such a swell job of it.“ Dean crawled over Sam’s legs to get off the bed. Sam barely resisted kicking him.

Dean made his way to the bathroom, leaving the door open as he headed to the toilet. 

“We don’t have to touch all the time.”  Sam countered, putting the book down as the leprechauns kept multiplying.  “But maybe when I need to sleep.  Or eat.”

“Or think.  Or not go completely insane.”  Dean finished peeing and went to the sink to wash his hands.  “It’s going to get weird, Sam.”

“Don’t do it then.”  Sam snapped.  “I was fine before, I’ll be fine now.”

Dean snorted at that as he grabbed two bottles of water from the green cooler he had brought in from the car.  There was no ice, so they weren’t exactly cool, but Sam took one gratefully anyway.  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it.  Last thing I want is for you to end up back in the hospital.  They were going to deep fry your brain, Sam.” 

Dean crawled back over.  Sam tried not to whimper as his arm jolted with Dean’s movements. “Thanks for recap, but I was there, I know what happened,” snarked Sam as Dean got settled again.

“Point is.”  Dean took a long drink and put the water bottle on the other side of him.  “I didn’t say I wasn’t willing to touch you, I was just pointing out it could get awkward.”

“Point taken.”  Sam twisted his own water bottle open.  He was just about to take a drink when the leprechaun got between him and the bottle and spit into it.

Not real, thought Sam.

But his gag reflex made it crystal clear that drinking from the bottle wasn’t happening.

Sighing he put it aside.

Dean immediately pressed against his side again.  “Drink, your skin is dry.  You’re getting dehydrated.”

“I must have missed you getting your medical license.” But Sam picked up the bottle again anyway and they sat there for a bit, Sam waiting for the leprechauns and Lucifer to vanish, Dean just watching him in that intense way he had sometimes that made Sam’s heart lurch.

Maybe Dean was right about this being awkward.  Maybe he should find out if it worked when other people touched him.  But then what was he going to do?  Hire someone to touch him constantly?  Cause yeah, that wouldn’t be awkward either.

Once the coast was clear and it was just him and Dean again, Sam once again tried to drink but the image of the leprechaun spitting in the water made it impossible.  With a very loud, put upon sigh, Dean grabbed his own water bottle and handed it to Sam.

“Thanks,” Sam said, drinking about half of it in one gulp.  He really had been thirsty.

Dean watched him drink for a long moment, and their eyes met over the water bottle.  Some of the water went down the wrong way and Sam choked a bit, pulling the water bottle from his lips as he struggled to get his breath back.  Dean eyes tracked the movement.

They sat there.  Dean pressed against Sam.  Sam’s fingers idly playing with the water bottle.

“Awkwaaaaaaardddd,” Dean mumbled.

“Shut up,” Sam automatically replied.  He scooted around in the bed, trying to get comfortable.  Between his immobilized arm and Dean pressed against him, he felt fenced in. It made his skin itchy, and not from the dryness.

“Well, I have a deck of cards in the car,” Dean commented.  “There’s no table, so we’d have to play on the floor.  Course it would be hard to play and keep the touching thing going. I guess we could take off our boots and play footsie.”

Sam felt a blush forming. “Shut up,” he repeated, taking another quick swallow of the water to hopefully hide his reaction.

“Or you could just read to me,” Dean went on.  “Maybe that story about the princess and the – “

“Shut _up_.”  Sam wondered if dealing with Lucifer was better than this embarrassment he was feeling.  “Look, I’ll read to you if it will shut you the hell up.”

Dean pressed his lips together and mimed throwing away the key.  Sam picked up the book again.

He read for over an hour.  Other than his voice, the cabin was still and quiet in a way that Sam hadn’t experienced since the wall broke.  Dean had relaxed against his side, and he felt warm and solid and Sam was reminded how safe he had felt as a child when Dean would crowd next to him in his bed and comfort him after a nightmare. 

It felt familiar.

And weird.

It was getting too dark to see the words and Sam’s eyes were feeling droopy, heavy. 

“Bathroom then bed?”  Dean suggested.  “Maybe he won’t bother you too much if we make a quick run for it.”

There was only so much “quick” Sam could manage, with his arm hobbling him the way it was.  After keeping it still for so long, movement sent fresh jolts of pain jolting through his body.  Dean pressed him to take more pain pills, but Sam popped a couple of Advil instead, hoping to at least dim the sharpness of the pain.  By the time they made their way back to the bed, Lucifer was almost completely formed again.  Sam was happy to see that he didn’t appear again immediately. Maybe one day he would just not reappear at all.

If Sam was lucky.

Which, let’s face it, he never was.

Finding a position in that too-small bed, with Sam’s arm and Dean’s insistence that he would never, ever, no way in hell _ever_ be the little spoon, it took a while to find a position that was comfortable for both of them.  Sam ended up laying his arm flat on the bed in front of him while he was on his side, tilting slightly back so as not to put pressure anywhere on his arm.  Dean was behind him, his hand not quite touching Sam’s side, being unusually timid.

“It has to be more,” Sam said, as Lucifer began a new rampage, clearly not happy about Sam vanishing him again.  “It has to be - solid.”

Dean inched forward until his legs pressed against the back of Sam’s.  Their upper bodies still weren’t touching, but Dean’s hand was resting against Sam’s side.  “I hope this is okay, because we are about to wander into PG-13 territory,” Dean said from behind him.

Sam waited the few minutes and sure enough, mid-way from throwing one of the unlucky leprechauns across the room, Lucifer flickered out.

For a very long time, neither Sam or Dean spoke.  They didn’t sleep either.  They just lay there in that awkward position, and each tried to convince the other that they were asleep with their fake deep breathing.

Neither one called the other on it.

Neither one of them relaxed.

But time and silence finally did their thing, and Sam found his thoughts drifting.  Dean’s hand inched until it was touching his hipbone and he was unconsciously rubbing a little circle.   It felt nice.  And warm. And –

Sam woke up to Dean pressed against his back and Dean’s cock pressed against his ass.

Awkward.


	6. Chapter 6

The first touch is tentative, a tongue ghosting against the sensitive head of his cock.   Sam hisses, his fingers flex in Dean’s hair, but he carefully doesn’t push, doesn’t pull, his fingers just restlessly move over the short locks.

Dean’s tongue gets bolder, licking a stripe from the head of Sam’s cock almost down to the base.

The sound that comes out of Sam’s mouth isn’t a whine.  It isn’t.

Dean looks up at him through those ridiculously long lashes, a wicked gleam in those sparkling emerald eyes.

And then Dean opens his mouth wide and takes Sam all the way in, and Sam’s engulfed in that beautiful, talented mouth.  Dean’s tongue is pressed underneath his cock, Dean’s lips are stretched wide and he’s sucking so hard Sam’s brain cells are turning into mush and all his world is Dean and Sam can’t help but arch into the –

Sam woke up in the dark, heart racing, breathing heavy, dick hard.  Behind him Dean mumbled irritably, his arm tightening on Sam’s waist, but then he was still.

Fuck.

Dean’s seemingly mandatory morning wood was pressed against Sam’s thigh.  And Sam was hard too, as hard as he ever remembered being.  And it ached.  He ached.

For three days they had woken up this way.  For three days, they had spent almost every second touching, and even though neither one of them would ever dare admit it, all that touching was doing something, changing something between them.

As evidenced by the predicament Sam was currently in.

They were going to have to figure out another way to banish Lucifer before something – before anything – before…

Sam shifted slightly, so that his broken arm was stable on the bed and he could free his left hand.

He reached down inside his linen pants as his thoughts tumbled about, using the pre-cum on the head of his cock as lubricant and stroking himself a few times before he realized what he was doing, and his hand stilled.

He was masturbating in bed with his brother right behind him.

There were some lines that should never be crossed.  Sam was aware enough to know that their bond was fucked-up, too intense and boundaries between them too blurry.  But this was still a step too far.

But he was hard – so hard and – the dream was still vivid in his mind.

And Dean was such a heavy sleeper.

He pulled down the linen pants and his boxers, just enough to free his hard, aching cock.  The fabric pooled on his balls, adding an extra bit of pressure. His hand began moving again, slowly at first.  Even with the slight moisture from his precum, the slide was rough going, the skin tugging.   Sam closed his eyes and tried not to imagine a warm wet mouth ghosting over his cock, especially not _that_ mouth with those full lips, with that tongue, so eager to taste, so –

And Sam had a vivid memory of himself in his late teens, furiously jacking off in the shower to – no, he wasn’t going there.

His hand was moving faster, the glide getting easier as his cock was pulsing pre-cum with every stroke now.  He knew his breath was hitching, and he wished he had a free hand to cover his mouth, stifle his moans.

Not long now – not long and there would be release and he could go back to sleep and Dean would never –

A hand covered his, stilling his movement.  Sam’s eyes flew open, and for a panicky moment he actually thought it was Lucifer.  But it was Dean’s hand covering his, and Lucifer had gone wherever he went when Sam and Dean touched.

Sam didn’t say a word, he couldn’t, his brain had skidded to a complete stop.  Dean batted his hand away and Sam tensed, ready for the yelling because god knew he deserved it.  But instead of scorn and harsh words, one of Dean’s fingers traced the head of his cock. Dean’s fingers were calloused, rough, and the finger was barely touching him but Sam was overwhelmed with want, with need.

Two fingers were stroking around the head of his cock now, a fingernail teasing his slit, and Sam had to bite his lower lip to stifle his moan.  His good hand fisted in the covers, holding so tightly that his fingers cramped but he couldn’t let go of the fabric.

Dean’s whole hand gripped the head of his cock, and then slid down, back up.  He went slowly at first, torturously slowly but Sam just gripped the covers tighter and closed his eyes, letting the pleasure build, letting it take him down and under.

Up, down, a small twist at the head of his cock, back down again.

Fuck.

Dean’s breath was heavy and warm on his back, Dean’s hand moving faster, and Sam was so lost in a fog of pressure building, lost in a sea of sensation, lost in Dean…Dean.

He realized he was whispering Dean’s name over and over as Dean’s hand went faster.  “Let go, Sammy,” Dean whispered behind him, voice rough and hoarse. “I got you, let go.”

And Sam did, orgasm pushing through him like an explosion, come covering Dean’s hand, the bed in front of him, hell probably even the floor.

It took a few moments for his heart to stop pounding so loudly he couldn’t hear anything else.  Behind him, Dean was unnaturally still.

Seconds went by, a minute, two.

Sam’s heartbeat went back to normal; Dean’s breathing no longer sounded harsh.

“Dean--“ Sam began, with no idea of what he was going to say.

“Don’t.”  Dean’s voice was firm and almost angry from behind him.  “Just – just go back to sleep, Sam.”

Dean’s hand had gone back to Sam’s hip, so Sam reached down and pulled up his linen pants.  He felt dirty.  He longed to take a shower, would even welcome the bitter coldness of the water.  But he stayed still.

He didn’t know if Dean slept or not; he could be sleeping, he could be faking it.  But it was an undeterminable amount of time, what seemed like hours, before Sam relaxed enough to fall back asleep.

Sam woke up alone.  Dean was sitting in the chair, slumped over, head in his hands.

Sam had discovered that it took about thirty minutes for Lucifer to appear if they had been touching all night.  The length of time Lucifer stayed away seemed to be directly correlated to the length of time Sam and Dean had touched; anything under an hour or two and he appeared almost immediately.  But all night gave Sam about a thirty-minute reprieve.  Thirty minutes that Dean didn’t have to touch him.

Sam sat up in bed. His pants were sticky, and he had scooted over in the night and ended up lying in more of the dried-up come.  He needed a shower, and desperately needed a change of clothes.  He had been switching from the linen pants he was hospitalized in to a pair of sweat pants that had been in his backpack.  Dean had washed some of their laundry in the lake just yesterday, with some harsh lye soap he had found in the bathroom.  At least he would have something clean to wear.  Sam winced, imagining Dean having to wash the come out of the pants he was wearing.

Speaking of which –

What could he say? Sorry for spurting all over your hand?   Sorry you felt obligated to help me with my little problem?  Sorry I am such a fucking screw up that I landed us both in this mess?

He cleared his throat, and Dean looked up.

As if he knew what Sam was about to say—not that Sam was too sure himself, but Dean always seemed to have a sense about these things and he was usually right—Dean began talking.  Too fast, voice too bright; he had obviously been rehearsing this in his mind.

“Look Sam, you aren’t going to like this – “

Great, because that sentence always ended well.

Dean stood up, wiping his hands on his pants in a restless, mindless gesture.  “We need things.  Food, Tylenol for you since you refuse to pop the pain pills, toilet paper cause we are damn near out.”

Sam started to scoot off the bed.  “Let me take a quick shower and – “

Dean held his hands out in a manner meant to pacify.  “Look, I don’t mean to – I just – I want to check on the Leviathan situation and maybe put some feelers out there, see if a hunter knows a doctor that can look at that arm, cause we both know it ain’t healing right.”

“Yeah, sure Dean.  Look, I’ll be really fast in the shower, I’ll be ready to go in like ten minutes.”

“I just – I think it would be better -I mean, I hate leaving you with Lucifer and all but – “

“Just say whatever it is you want to say.”  Sam knew his tone was testy, but hell.

“I think I should go alone.”  Dean looked straight at Sam now, eyes unflinching, no longer nervous apparently now that he got the words out. “With the Leviathans and the demons looking for us, things could go south pretty quick.”

“And I’d slow you down.”  Sam finished for him, he could feel his face flush a bit. He was glad that Lucifer wasn’t around to witness this, real or not. He would have a field day with this conversation.

“I won’t be gone long. I’ll be back before dark.  You can handle things – handle Lucifer until I get back, right?  It will be a quick trip, probably only a few hours or so.”

“I’m not five, Dean.  And I handled Lucifer for months before we started this – before the hospital.  Go do what you have to do, I’ll be okay.”

“Look, I’ll make you breakfast before I go.”  Dean’s eyes skittered away from Sam’s, but not before Sam could see the relief there.  “Help you shower, change.  Get you some books.  You could go for a walk, you always like communicating with nature or whatever the crap you call that.”

“Dean, I’m fine.”  Sam stood up, stretching with the one arm he could use for that, trying hard to exude confidence and calm.  “I can do all those things on my own.”

“Maybe,” Dean allowed, as he opened the bathroom door for Sam. “But I’m going to help you anyway.”

Dean was brisk, almost businesslike as he helped Sam pull up his sweats after his shower.  Sam felt more exposed than he had the last few days, with his bare chest and the memory of Dean’s hands on him and the way Dean’s impersonal touch made him feel itchy and wrong.  He wished he could figure out a way to get one of the plaid shirts on over the splint, but short of totally cutting off the sleeves there really wasn’t a way, and he couldn’t really ask Dean to do that without going into – things he doesn’t want to get into. So Sam just shivered a bit until Dean draped a towel over his shoulders, because of course he noticed.

Dean’s legs touched his, barely, as he shoved down some oatmeal.  Sam knew he should tell Dean he hadn’t seen Lucifer yet, but with Dean’s departure so close, he couldn’t force himself to forfeit even this slight touch.  Instead he fed himself this time, eating a couple of granola bars and drinking two bottles of water, not wanting to become dehydrated during Dean’s absence and not at all certain Lucifer would let him drink while Dean was away.

They said not four words between them as they ate.  Dean checked the salt lines, checked that everything was secure, checked that Sam had everything he needed, all without saying a word.

At the door Dean turned and looked back at Sam for a long moment.  Their eyes locked and the air in the cabin seemed denser, uncertain.  Then Dean turned around and headed out the door.

Sam had never felt so alone in his life.


	7. Chapter 7

Sam wandered the cabin restlessly for a while before settling back on the bed, book in hand. Lucifer should have been back by now, but Sam wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.  He needed a distraction, and he’d always been able to get lost in books.  So, while he could, he decided to read.

But Lucifer or no Lucifer, Sam’s mind refused to settle into the book.  He kept replaying the night in his head, Dean’s hand pushing his away, Dean’s rough sure strokes.  Dean’s name on Sam’s lips as he came.

Dean sitting in the chair, head in his hands, looking more lost than Sam could ever remember him being.

No wonder Dean ran away the moment he could.  If Dean wasn’t the self-sacrificing idiot that he was, he’d probably keep running and never come back.  It was certainly what Sam deserved.

Sighing, Sam pushed the book aside.  His arm was hurting like crazy, but the last thing he wanted to do was to give into the lure of the pain pills.  He needed a better distraction than the book was giving him.

He struggled to put on his boots, then worried his bottom lip, trying to decide what to do about a shirt.  Eventually, he just put on his jacket, slinging it around his shoulders and sliding his good arm into one sleeve, the other empty and awkward.  It didn’t offer much as a barrier to the chill, but it wasn’t all that cold out anyway. 

Sam thought about leaving Dean a note but realized he probably wouldn’t be able to write anything legible with his left hand anyway.  He was just going out to the lake, maybe wade in the water, take in a bit of nature.  He’d be back before Dean returned from his trip.

It had been over an hour now, and as Sam shut the door, he realized he had not seen one sign of Lucifer.  Could he dare hope that the famous Winchester luck had changed and that Lucifer had just vanished on his own?

Nah.

The terrain, predictably, was rough, and every step sent a jolt of pain through Sam’s arm.  Sam hoped Dean could find someone to fix the break, otherwise he was looking at a permanent injury.  Mind damaged, body damaged, he really was a freaking liability.  Sam kicked the rock in front of him, sending it careening ahead. If he was any kind of man, he would take off while Dean was gone.  Dean would be better off without him, that was painfully obvious.

He tried to think of something else, anything else, but his mind kept replaying the previous night over and over.  And Dean’s obviously devastated reaction this morning.

He was going to sit Dean down the moment he got back, and he was going to refuse to let Dean touch him anymore.  He could withstand a lifetime with Lucifer if he had to.  What he couldn’t stand was for Dean to feel like he needed to give Sam more than Sam should take.  He knew his brother.  He knew Dean would give him everything.  He knew Dean would give him all the parts of himself that Sam had no right to.  It was up to Sam to end this now, before either of them ended up hurt worse.

It was then that he heard the screams.

High pitched, definitely female, close enough that the sound was piercing.  Forgetting all about the pain in his arm, Sam took off at a run, barely managing to skirt around trees, being hit in the face with branches a number of times.  The woman screamed again and was silent.

Sam stopped running, a hand on his knees, trying to catch his breath and waiting to hear if the woman screamed again.  In front of him was a clearing, some kind of meadow nestled in the middle of the woods.

Sam walked into a sea of flowers, eyes continually searching, looking for the source of the scream.  The meadow was pristine, beautifully untouched.  Purple and white flowers bloomed everywhere, under Sam’s feet, all the way to the edge of the embankment in front of him.  Despite how late it was in the season, there were literally hundreds of butterflies flitting from one flower to another.  It was so beautiful here it made Sam’s heart hurt.

Then another scream startled him back into action. It came from somewhere near the embankment.  Sam rushed to the edge, cautiously looking down.  Rocks, more flowers, a drop of maybe five feet, but no woman.

“Surprise!” 

Lucifer’s voice was right in his ear.  Startled, Sam turned to face the sneering, smirking face of his tormentor, forgetting for a second where he was standing. His foot teetered over the edge for a second and Sam fought to retain balance but then Lucifer took a step closer and Sam lost his footing.

For a moment he hovered over the edge, suspended in time and space.

Then he was falling, falling, his bad arm hitting the rocks as he rolled down the embankment, landing in a sea of wildflowers at the bottom.

Pain. Piercing, disabling, blinding fucking pain.

It took Sam several moments to realize that the person screaming this time was him, but he couldn’t stop – his world had narrowed down to his arm, crumpled underneath him at a very unsettling angle, pain so agonizing that his mind couldn’t focus on anything else.

Sam heard laughter above his head, he didn’t have to open his eyes to know the source.

He tried to shift, but that put even more pressure on his arm, and now blackness was encroaching on him. With one huge movement Sam managed to roll over, freeing his arm and succumbing to the darkness at the same time.

When he opened his eyes, it was to blackness and to pain.

For a moment, he thought he was still unconscious before he realized that he must have been out for several hours. It was pitch black night, the moon apparently hidden by clouds.

Sam struggled to sit up, but a wave of dizziness forced him to lie back down.

“My, my.”  Lucifer was standing over him. He had made a chain from the wild flowers, and by the look of it, it went on forever.  “This is quite a predicament. You are quite the damsel in distress.”

Lucifer laid the flowers over Sam’s prone body.  Sam was in so much pain it even hurt to breathe.  Pushing through the pain to actually form a plan seemed like an impossible dream.

“Quite a pretty damsel you make, too, Sam-you-am.  Just waiting for a prince and a kiss.”

Sam closed his eyes, not that wishing Lucifer away had ever worked, but he really needed to get his brain working again.  Dean must be worried sick by now.

When Lucifer spoke again, his voice was right by his ear.  Sam’s eyes flew open, and he saw Lucifer crouched beside him.

“But it’s not a prince’s kiss you want, is it Sammy?  It’s Dean.  I know what’s in that sick, twisted brain of yours. I know you want him. You really are a sick, sick boy, aren’t you?”

“Go away.”  Sam managed between gritted teeth. “This is all your fucking fault.”

“Me?” Lucifer pointed to himself, all faux-innocence. “Me?  This was going on long before I came into the picture, you deluded boy.  Your first wet dream?  Dean, washing his car with his shirt off.  The first girl you kissed?  It was Dean’s lips you were picturing as you closed your eyes and leaned in.  Oh, you tamped that shit down, you forced it into a tiny part of your brain, shoved it into a locked box, threw away the key.  But it was still there, festering away, twisting you into the nasty creature you are today.  No wonder Dean ran.  He couldn’t get away from you fast enough.”

“Shut.  Up.” Sam closed his eyes again. It wasn’t true.  He never wanted Dean, not this way.  It was just – adolescent confusion, all the time they spent together, all that forced closeness because of the way they grew up.

“I did you a favor, you know.”  Lucifer went on, unperturbed.  “You are so far off the beaten path your brother will never find you.  You’ll die of exposure out here, and he’ll finally be free of you.  It’s what is best, Sam, you know that it is.  Because – you are poisoning him.  Slowly, surely, you are spreading your sickness into him.”

He was right.  Lucifer was right.  No way on his own Dean would have ever given Sam – would have touched Sam that way.  It was Sam, corrupting him.  He couldn’t even blame the demon blood. The evil was just in him, and he couldn’t do this to Dean – because he knew his brother.  Dean would sacrifice everything for him.  Dean would never be able to sit idly by and let Lucifer torment Sam, he would insist on touching Sam even if it led to – even if he had to -

Dean would be better off without him.

Except…

Dean would never get over it.  He would feel the guilt the rest of his life.  And knowing Dean, he would scour the earth for any angel, any demon, any being he could force – or even worse, beg – to do his bidding.

He couldn’t do that to Dean.  He couldn’t leave him alone like that.

Sam tried once more to struggle to his feet, but the pain in his arm became overwhelming just as soon as he moved it, and the wave of terrifying dizziness had him landing back on the cold earth.

Fuck.

“It’s getting colder.”  Lucifer noted, holding a finger out in the air.  “Your feet are already numb.”

It was true, Sam realized. Maybe that was why he was having so much trouble standing.  Also, the tips of his fingers were numb, too.  The jacket, half of it lying uselessly under his back, was not helping at all.  
  
“You should just close your eyes,” Lucifer suggested, false concern dripping from his voice.  “You look sleepy.  Just close your eyes, Sam, close your eyes and I’ll be quiet, and you can just drift away.”

Sam shifted again, and his arm, which he had apparently broken in new places, sent a spark of pain so devastating that Sam’s vision began to dim, blackness closing in again.

But Sam fought it.   He was not leaving his brother alone, he was not dooming his brother to a lifetime of looking for a way to bring him back.  The rest – the sickness in him – he could deal with that later.  But first – he had to get off the damn ground.

Gritting his teeth, Sam thumped the ground over and over again with his feet until the stings and pricks of pain proved that the numbness was wearing off.  He concentrated solely on that, doing his best to ignore Lucifer’s list of reasons why Sam should just go to sleep and never wake up.

Lucifer was probably right about all of them, but Sam was going to fight his way to his feet anyway.

Once he felt his feet were strong enough, Sam tried again to stand.  He got one knee up and was struggling to get the other foot underneath him when he felt a fresh wave of pain and dizziness and felt himself topple over.  He screamed when he landed on his arm.

The blackness was back, clouding his vision and his mind was muddled and he imagined he heard Dean calling for him, voice frantic and loud and so-

So -

Sam felt the world slipping away and he knew if he went under he would never wake up, but Sam was so tired and in that blackness, there was no pain.

It was welcoming him.

“No, no no no no no.”  The words came fast, harsh and they didn’t sound like Lucifer.  Puzzled, Sam suspended himself between wakefulness and the darkness that was so close, so welcoming.

“I’ve got you.  I’ve got you, Sammy.”  Sam opened his eyes again, confused.  Lucifer sounded so much like Dean.  But it was Dean’s worried green eyes he saw when he looked up.  Dean was kneeling beside him, clearly unsure where to touch Sam.

Sam fought his way through the haze and his fingers reached up, traced Dean’s cheek which was puzzlingly wet.

“You came,” He says, unsure if this was an illusion or if it was real, but not really caring too much either way. 

“I always will.” Dean bent his head down, and it must be a dream, it must be the darkness, it isn't real because Dean’s lips are on his and the kiss wasn’t soft, it wasn’t swift – it was hard and it was harsh and it was demanding and Sam gave into it and the last thought he has before he drowned in that kiss was –

He was home.


	8. Chapter 8

“So how are you feeling?”

Sam looked up at the woman standing beside his makeshift hospital bed.  She looked tired, probably just came from a shift at the hospital. 

Sam smiled at her, lifting up his arm which was now covered up by a cast.  “Great, thanks to you.”

Beside him, there was a snort.  Dean lifted his head where it had been resting on Sam’s shoulder.  “He’s in pain, he is a stubborn ass and he won’t admit it, but he’s been grinding his teeth ever since he woke up.”

Emily, which she insisted on being called instead of Dr. Addison, gave them both a sad smile.  “There is no way I can get morphine for you, Sam, it was all I could do to get the equipment I needed for – “ Her hand waved in the direction of Sam’s cast.

During Dean’s trip to the nearest town, which had been located fifty miles from their cabin, he had found that the Leviathan problem had grown alarmingly, that they were no longer hiding in the shadows but standing fearlessly in the light.  He learned that several hunter acquaintances of theirs had been killed or were missing.  He also found Duncan, a hunter who Bobby knew and trusted, and Duncan had a sister who happened to be an orthopedic surgeon. 

Sam didn’t remember the trip they made to get here. Hell, he didn’t even remember Dean pulling him up or the walk to the car or anything from the moment Dean’s lips claimed his to waking up, dazed and confused, with a cast on his arm.

Emily had done the best she could with the limited equipment she had been able to steal from the hospital, but she had been honest with Sam.  Sam’s arm would never be the same.  He would be able to use it, but it would never be at full strength and it would probably always cause him pain.

“It’s okay,” he said to her now, after giving Dean a look, the kind that always earned him an eye roll from his brother.  “It’s not that bad.”

Another snort.  Apparently the bitch face had no impact.

Emily quickly checked her handiwork before giving Sam a couple of white pills.  Sam didn’t ask what they were, he just swallowed them gratefully.  After reassuring Sam she would check on him later, Emily left the room.

“We can’t keep staying here,” Sam commented, bringing himself to a sitting position. What Emily gave him might not be morphine, but it was strong.  He was already beginning to feel warm, a bit fuzzy around the edges. “We’re putting her in danger.”

Dean nodded. “I’ve already made plans for us to leave in the morning.”  His hand was rubbing a soothing circle on Sam’s other arm.   Sam shifted so that he could face Dean fully.

“Where?”  Sam asked.  “Back to the cabin?”

Dean shook his head. “Somewhere else. Somewhere we can be safe and lay low for a while. We got to find a place we can have access to books, research.  The Leviathans – well, they haven’t been exactly sitting idle waiting for us to get back to fighting strength.  If we don’t jump back into the fight soon, there might not be enough of the world left to fight for.”

Sam’s tongue had to be pain-pill loose because instead of asking where they were going, instead of talking about the Leviathans, he asked instead the question that had been on his mind since he had woken up in this bed two days ago.  “Why did you kiss me?”

Dean blushed, an honest-to-God pink-tinged blush that started at his neck and infused his whole face. “Maybe we should talk about this later, when you aren’t so – this.” 

Sam wasn’t sure if Dean was referring to his arm or to his fuzzy mental state, but he didn’t care either way.  He had gotten the question out, and he wanted an answer.

“I know I – I know it was my fault you – in the bed that day, that was me.  I was thinking, I mean if you – I should ask Emily to touch me maybe.  Find out for sure if it’s anyone’s touch and then you could – “

Sam knew he wasn’t making a lot of sense, but he also knew his brother understood exactly what he was trying to say.

“No. If anyone is going to touch you, it’s going to be me.”  Dean’s tone was ferocious, and Sam found himself a bit taken aback.  “I don’t care if it’s not just me, nobody else is going to – you are my brother and I am going to take care of you.”

“So, in the meadow that was – that was you taking care of me?”  Sam asked, hurt in a way he didn’t want to examine.

Dean pushed the chair closer to the bed. In the two days they had been there, Dean rarely left that chair.  He slept in it, his body slumped over the parts of Sam he could safely touch without causing Sam more pain.  He ate meals in it.  He only left it to go the bathroom, take a phone call or two, get food for them.  Sam felt a surge of guilt – he messed things up and Dean took care of him.  The story of their fucked-up lives.

“That was me telling you – that was me, showing you…”  Dean’s voice trailed off and he looked at Sam with such pain in his eyes that Sam thought maybe he was the one who should have taken the little white pills.

“This is my fault; I know it is.”  Sam said, voice small.  “You think it’s your job to take care of me.  You think it’s your job even if what I want, even if what I think I need is – I never meant to push you to – I will keep my distance, I swear.  You never have to do – that – you won’t ever have to again.  We can go back to just being brothers. It’s not too late.”

For a long moment, Dean said nothing.  Sam couldn’t force himself to man up and look at Dean, so instead he picked at the old shirt he was wearing. It was sleeveless and old and had once been Dean’s.  It felt comforting, just like the hands on Sam’s arm felt comforting, and Sam’s fuzzy mind could find no shame in needing that comfort.  If he couldn’t have Dean like his heart wanted, at least he could have this.

Dean’s hand stopped the lazy circles it had been drawing on Sam’s arm and instead went to the back of Sam’s neck.  Startled, Sam looked up to find Dean’s face inches from his. “You are so stupid,” Dean whispered before his lips met Sam’s and Sam’s eyes closed as he melted into the kiss.

Seconds—minutes?—later, Dean pulled away to nip at Sam’s lower lip and then he looked Sam in the eye.  “Do you get it now?”

Confused and scared and shaken, Sam shook his head slowly.

“I’m not doing this because I have to, or because you made me, or because I think it’s my job to take care of you, or whatever other fucked up thing you are imagining.  I am doing this because from the moment I picked you up in California my hands have been itching to grab you and pull you close and take you to bed.  I tried to destroy those feelings with booze and hunting, but I never could.  I am doing this because I want to, Sam.  I am doing this because _I_ need to.”

“Fuck,” Sam whispered back, eyes tracking as Dean rubbed an anxious hand through his hair. 

“Yeah, exactly,” Dean replied.

“So where – where do we go from here?”  Without his permission, Sam’s eyes were falling shut, the pain pills having soaked in his bloodstream long enough to take him under.

Dean pushed up Sam’s shirt, resting his head on Sam’s stomach.  “Anywhere we want,” Sam heard right before the world melted away.

 

Two Days Later

Sam woke up to Dean’s arm wrapped around his waist, and to Dean’s hardon pressed against his ass.

In other words, a typical morning.

Sam wiggled around a bit, enjoying the feeling of pressure against his bottom.

From behind him a voice grumbled, “Don’t start anything you aren’t prepared to finish.”

Sam wiggled again and was rewarded by Dean’s sharp intake of breath, Dean’s lips on his neck.

They were in a hotel in the middle of nowhere, headed to who knows where.  After leaving Emily’s the day before, Dean had headed west, driving 20 hours straight, one hand on the wheel and one hand holding Sam’s. 

Sam turned around—no easy task with how hard Dean was holding him and with the heavy cast on his arm—and nuzzled his nose against Dean’s.  “Morning,” he whispered as Dean reluctantly opened his eyes.  “Time to wake up.”

“I’m not getting out of this bed until there’s coffee,” Dean responded, eyes already closing again.

“Who said anything about getting out of bed?” Sam asked, as his fingers traced circles around Dean’s nipples.  Even without direct stimulation, they began to harden.  Last night, after a quick supper at the local Mexican restaurant where the food had been surprisingly good, they had fell into bed, lips and limbs tangling, clothes shoved off and left discarded on the floor, hands touching anything, everything.  Sam tried to deny how exhausted he felt, but Dean saw right through him, damn him, and made quick work of both their erections with fast hard twists of his hand.   Sam was asleep even before Dean came back with the towels to clean them off.

But now it was morning and Sam was wide awake.  And he was ready. 

Sam grabbed Dean with his good arm as he lay down on his back, pulling Dean on top of him.  Dean’s eyes flew open, and then they glinted with a familiar mischievousness as they looked into Sam’s.

“Is there something you want, Sam?” Dean asked, hands ghosting up and down Sam’s side, that stupid beautiful smirk on his face.

“Everything,” Sam replied, still awed that he could have this thing, even after all the ways Dean had reassured him that he wanted this too.  “I want everything.”

Dean lifted up and Sam made a grab for him, a protest half-formed on his lips.  “If we’re going to do this thing, we are going to do it right,” Dean informed him as he reached for his backpack beside the bed.  After a few moments of searching and a few murmured curses, Dean pulled out a bottle of lube.  “Lie back down Sammy, let me take care of you.”

Sam did, not surprised when Dean’s first action was to move the pillow so that Sam’s head was resting more fully on it.  He reached for Dean again, more than ready to get the show on the road, but Dean batted his hands away as he settled on Sam’s hips. 

Dean put the lube down by Sam’s pillow and leaned down to kiss Sam.  Sam’s mouth opened immediately, inviting him in as Dean’s lips met his.

Sam reached, pulling Dean closer with his arm around Dean’s neck and Dean’s hands were on his hips, squeezing a little too rough as their lips and their tongues tangled in a way that sent shivers through Sam’s entire body.  Damn, Dean was good at kissing.  Sam’s breath was coming out harsh and heavy when Dean finally lifted his head, breaking the kiss.

Dean scooted further down Sam’s body and his lips were on Sam’s neck and there was the feel of tongue and just a hint of teeth and Sam was trying to writhe but Dean’s body was holding him down, holding him still.  Dean’s lips were on one of Sam’s nipples and fuck – Sam fisted a hand in Dean’s hair as that tongue of his circled one of Sam’s nipples and then the other leaving them wet and hard and wanting and Dean was moving again…

 

Dean was leaving a trail of kisses down Sam’s torso and Sam could feel his stomach muscles tense and relax as Dean made his way down, down.  A light teasing press of teeth against Sam’s hips. 

“Dean – c’mon– “  Sam tried to move his legs but Dean was now sitting on them, hands pressed against Sam’s hips, mouth tantalizingly close to Sam’s cock.

“Shh,” Dean said, his mouth so close to Sam’s cock that Sam could feel the whispery words against it  “We’re going to get there, I promise.”

Sam groaned.  Dean was killing him slowly, cruelly with his mouth and his hands and –

Fuck!

Sam rose off the bed as Dean took his cock in his mouth, his tongue pressing against Sam’s slit before sliding further down, and Dean’s eyes were looking up at his, sinful and sexy and – shit.  In all the ways Sam had imagined this very thing, it had never felt like this, so intense that it was bordering on painful as Dean lifted off, just to slide Sam’s cock back inside again, his cheeks hollowing as he applied pressure in all the right places.

Dean lifted his body off of Sam but thank all the gods his mouth stayed where it was, continuing its sweet torture.  It took Sam’s sex-muddled mind a long moment to realize that Dean wanted Sam to bend his legs.  Sam did, and then was confused when Dean crooked his fingers in the direction of Sam’s head.  He chose that moment to fucking hum, Sam felt the vibrations all the way down to his balls so when Dean crooked his fingers again, all Sam could think to give him was his hand.

Dean lifted off and Sam almost lifted his whole lower body off the bed, chasing his mouth before he realized what he was doing and made himself lie back down again.  Dean wiped his mouth with his hand and Sam tracked the movement, noticing how deliciously wet and swollen his lips were.  Dean reached beside Sam and Sam was completely confused for a second before he realized what Dean was reaching for, what he had been asking Sam for.  And it was definitely not Sam’s hand.

“Okay, you try thinking straight when someone is treating your dick like a lollipop,” Sam said a tad defensively as Dean picked up the lube. 

“Anytime you want to suck me stupid, Sammy,” Dean said as he opened the lube.  “Be my guest.”

If Dean’s mouth hadn’t muddled Sam’s brain, Sam was sure he could come up with a better reply than “Are you going to fuck me or not?” But hey, it was all Dean’s fault anyway.

Dean chucked.  “Working on it, Sam.”  Dean’s hands pushed Sam’s legs further apart and watched as Dean settled between them.  Dean ran a soothing hand against one of Sam’s legs as his fingers, already coated in lube, brushed against his hole.  “Relax Sammy, it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be good.  I promise.”

The first press of Dean’s fingers felt weird and unsettling and Sam found himself tensing, even knowing that it would be more uncomfortable if he did.  Dean leaned up and over, gently kissing Sam as he whispered that it was all okay, that he was going to make Sam feel so good,  and Sam forced himself to relax and after a few moments, it didn’t feel as weird.  There was a pressure, but it wasn’t a bad feeling, just a different one.  Sam closed his eyes, his world limiting itself to the feel of Dean’s wet cool finger inside him, gently probing until the feeling changed from odd to almost pleasant.

One finger became two and again there was an uncomfortable too-full feeling that evolved into a feeling that was strange and unfamiliar, the sensation eventually relaxing into warmth.   Sam’s cock had wilted with the original press of Dean’s fingers but now he was hardening again.  He found himself tentatively pressing against Dean’s fingers.

“That’s good, Sam.  You’re doing so good, baby.”  Dean was pressing kisses against Sam’s lower stomach as his fingers probed inside, and Sam knew he was looking for Sam’s prostate. 

Then Dean’s fingers suddenly found it and fuck holy hell – Sam was arching off the bed and Dean was laughing, dark and deep and satisfied.  “Like that, Sammy?”

“Again,” Sam asked, pressing his lower body as hard as he could against Dean’s fingers.  “Fuck, do that again.”

Dean did, and then added another finger but Sam barely noticed. He was fully hard now and dripping and aching. “I’m ready, Dean.  C’mon.”

“Yeah, okay.”  There was the sound of foil ripping—Dean must have gotten a condom from one of their backpacks—and then there was the pressure of something bigger than fingers against Sam’s hole.  For a second Dean was still, and Sam was filled with a sense that their lives would be divided now between what was before this moment and all that would come after.  And then Dean was pressing in, slowly, carefully and all Sam could think about was the pressure, the fullness, the borderline pain that was filling him, consuming him.

Once Dean was all the way in, he stilled, and his fingers reached up and wiped the tear from Sam’s cheek that Sam hadn’t even realized had fallen.  “Okay, Sam?”

Sam nodded. “Just need a minute.”  

Dean kissed his forehead and then brought his head down so their foreheads were touching.  “As long as you need.”

Sam focused on his breathing, focused on relaxing and bit by bit the pain faded.  “All right, I’m okay for you to move.”  When Dean lifted his head, searching Sam’s eyes but still not moving, Sam added, “ C’mon, let’s see if you’re as good as you’ve always bragged you are.”

“I’m better,” Dean replied, and he pulled out and pushed back in so quickly that it forced a gasp out of Sam.  Smirk firmly in place, because the fucker knew that Sam found his smirk sexy, Dean began a rhythm, changing angles every few thrusts as he searched for Sam’s –

“Fuck, that’s it. Right the fuck there.”  Sam reached up with his good arm, pulling Dean into a kiss as the pain receded completely, leaving nothing but sparking pleasure behind it.  “Fuck oh please don’t stop.”

“God, you feel so good, Sam.  Never had it – “ Dean lightly nipped the side of Sam’s neck, then licked the brief sting away, not finishing the sentence.  But that was okay, Sam knew what he was going to say because he felt the same way too.

Dean’s thrusts were gentle but deadly accurate, hitting Sam’s prostate each time.  Sam was leaking pre-cum, and pleasure was building inside of him with each careful thrust in, careful thrust out.  Dean was holding himself up with one hand, the other tracing circles against the dip in Sam’s hip. 

Sam could feel his orgasm building, his need growing.  Dean reached his hand further down, his fingers still slick with lube and he stroked once, twice, and on the third time he twisted his hand just right and Sam was coming – all over Dean’s hand, over his stomach, over Dean’s stomach, marking them both.  Dean groaned, and Sam could feel the tremors of Dean’s body as his orgasm ripped through him and into the condom.

Sam had never felt like this before.  Sex had always been good, sometimes great, even occasionally miraculous when it was someone he loved, like Jess.  But this – this was like nothing he had ever experienced.  He felt like he was Dean’s in a way he had never been anyone else’s and he knew Dean was his, too.

Dean’s fingers traced over Sam’s cheek and neither one spoke until Dean lifted up and slowly, carefully pulled out of Sam.  

Dean pulled off the condom and threw it in the nearby trashcan.  “You good?  I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“I’m fine,” Sam assured him as Dean lowered himself back over Sam’s chest.  “I’m more than good – that was – “

Dean smiled, slow and sure. “Told you Sammy, I’m not just good, I’m the best. I’m so damn good, people write sonnets about how good I am. I mean, mostly they are written in bathroom stalls, but – “

Sam pulled Dean into a kiss which shut him up and left them both breathless.  “Shower?”  Sam suggested, because now that Dean was lying against him he was realizing just how uncomfortably sticky he was.

Dean stood up and held out his hand to pull Sam up.  “You know, I always wanted to try shower sex…”

Sam winced as he got out of bed, and this time it had nothing to do with his arm.  Dean was probably going to have to wait for sexy times in the shower, which sounded dangerous anyway.

The future was uncertain – there were the Leviathans to deal with; Lucifer was still hanging around, ready to torment Sam anytime he and Dean had to separate; Sam’s arm might never be fully healed; there were always monsters – some of them internal – for both of them to fight.

But as he let the water rush over him, as he watched his brother’s eyes widen as Sam slowly sank to his knees, Sam knew he had everything he ever wanted, everything he never thought he deserved, everything that made life worth fighting for – right here, right in front of him, his to touch.

_Baby in a world without pity_

_Do you think what I’m askin’s too much_

_I just want to feel you in my arms_

_Share a little of that human touch_

_Fell a little of that human touch_

_Give me a little of that human_ touch

 

The End


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